Known unknowns

The Chinese telecom firm has effectively been cut off from U.S. suppliers, from Qualcomm to Google. That happened to ZTE too, and the president relented largely to help trade talks. Huawei is a much bigger, bipartisan concern. Even so, a similar reprieve can’t be ruled out.

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Alphabet's Google has suspended business with Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies, Reuters reported on May 19. Huawei will lose access to updates to Google's Android mobile operating system and future versions of its smartphones running on Android will lose access to popular apps, including the Google Play Store, Gmail and YouTube, according to the report.

Alphabet's decision comes after the U.S. Commerce Department on May 16 put Huawei and its affiliates on its so-called Entity List. That means American companies selling products to Huawei must receive a special license.

Chipmakers including Intel, Qualcomm, Xilinx and Broadcom have told their employees they will not supply critical software and components to Huawei until further notice, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

A similar ban on Chinese state-owned ZTE was lifted in 2018 after a conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. In exchange, ZTE agreed to pay a $1 billion penalty, replace its board and host compliance monitors inside the company for 10 years.